Welcome to the blog of the California Teachers Empowerment Network. CTEN is a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the public at large with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.

At the same time it
is fighting reforms to traditional public schools, CTA is sponsoring four bills
that would make life more difficult for charter schools. LA School Report explains,

Four Democratic California lawmakers
joined forces yesterday to promote new bills aimed at creating more stringent
regulation of the state’s charter schools.

If passed, the package of bills would
bring big changes to the charter schools, including a requirement that they be
run as non-profits, that charters be considered government entities and that
all of their workers be public employees. One of them would also make it easier
for charter school teachers to unionize.

A recent report
informs us that both graduation rates anddropout rates have inched up in the
Golden State. How is that possible? According to the San Jose Mercury News,

California's
high school graduation rate continued its steady climb last year -- but
paradoxically, its dropout rate nudged up as well, according to figures
released Tuesday by the state Department of Education.

About four out of five students who
entered high school in fall 2010 graduated last June -- 80.8 percent, up from
80.4 percent for the previous class. But 11.6 percent of those destined for the
class of 2014 dropped out, up from 11.4 percent for the previous year's class.

Both figures can rise because neither
includes students who continue their education without graduating.

Much has been
written over the past few years about how teachers in the U.S. spend
upwards of 50 percent more time in front of their students than educators in
other countries. But according to a recent study by Samuel Abrams, director
of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Columbia
University Teachers College, it’s not true.

In reality, U.S. primary teachers spend about
12 percent more time leading classes than their OECD counterparts, not 50
percent; U.S. lower -- secondary teachers spend about 14 percent more time, not
65 percent; and U.S. upper -- secondary teachers spend about 11 percent more
time, not 73 percent.

“Shockingly Few
Students Are Proficient In U.S. History” read the headline in a Huffington Post piece a few weeks ago.
And if the latest NAEP history scores are any indication, the headline is
accurate.

Which of these do the governments of
Canada, France and Australia have in common: a) They are controlled by the
military; b) They have constitutions that limit their power; c) They have
leaders with absolute power; d) They discourage participation by citizens in
public affairs?

If you chose b, you're smarter than
more than 40 percent of America’s eighth graders. But that's a stubbornly low
bar, according to a report released Wednesday by the federal government’s
educational research arm.

Common Core still is
getting a large share of the edu-headlines these days and the testing opt-out
movement seems to be gaining strength on both the political right and left. Researcher
and Professor Jay Greene gave a particularly articulate statement to the Arkansas
Common Core Council a couple of weeks ago. In part, he said,

Standards are about what we value. They communicate
what we think is important for our children to learn, when they should learn
it, and ultimately what kinds of adults we hope they will grow up to be.

Because standards are about values, their
content is not merely a technical issue that can be determined by scientific
methods. There is no technically correct set of standards, just as there is no
technically correct political party or religion. Reasonable people have
legitimate differences of opinion about what they want their children taught. A
fundamental problem with national standards efforts, like Common Core, is that
they are attempting to impose a single vision of a proper education on a large
and diverse country with differing views.

The “free community
college” idea is still being bandied about. But is it really “free?” “No” says
Heritage Foundation’s Lindsey Burke. She points out that “Over the past
several decades, college costs have risen at more than twice the rate of
inflation, thanks in large part to federal subsidies.” To read more, go here - http://dailysignal.com/2015/01/09/free-community-college-anything-free/

Barry Garelick, co-founder of the U.S. Coalition for World
Class Math, which has provided extensive comments on the deficiencies of the
Common Core standards for mathematics, has written Teaching Math in the 21st Century, an honest, critical and entertaining look at math education
from the inside.

I am not an outright
proponent of the philosophy that ‘If you want something done right, you have to
live in the past’, but when it comes to how to teach math there are worse
philosophies to embrace.

And finally, this is
your last chance to take advantage of the following:

This
coming June and July, the Independent Institute is hosting “Challenge of Liberty,” a free
market seminar for students who are at least 18 years old.

The five-day series of
lectures, readings, films, multimedia presentations, and debates teach
participants what economics is, how it affects their lives, and how
understanding it can help them achieve better lives for themselves, their
communities, and the world at large. Challenge of Liberty illuminates
the intimate connection between principles of free market economics and public
policy decisions. Informative, inspiring, and fun, Challenge of Liberty is
an ideal way stay intellectually engaged over the summer while bolstering your
personal network and building your skill set.